When DC10 first launched it was on the back of one night, it’s hard to imagine now that they didn’t think they would get more than one night out of the now famous venue when you think of the Friday that established itself over the last year or two and the hugely popular Paradise Thursday launched this summer, not forgetting Visionquest, which returns tonight for it’s third party in as many years. The Visionquest party is actually more of a takeover than a party and this summer it has engaged the services of Jon Ozias – producer of parameter challenging series of events for Minus, Ghostly International, Transmat, Planet E and Motor and the creator of the UNTITLED parties in Detroit – as well as the UK’s Secret Productions crew, responsible for producing and operating the Secret Garden Party and Glade Festival, to name only a couple of parties.
The challenge? To change the look and feel of DC10, to challenge perceptions of the clubbers that regularly worship at the deep house church and to create an alternate reality where nothing is as it seems. It’s quite an undertaking and we are desperate to find out what they have done. Add to the expectation of the takeover, the fact that Visionquest means the arrival of Lee Curtiss, Ryan Crosson, Seth Troxler and Shaun Reeves, four of the most talented DJ/ producers in the electronic scene and Wednesday night in Playa D’en Bossa just got very interesting. Bossa is buzzing, it’s the first day of August, the start of the silly season, where anything and everything usually happens in Ibiza, the perfect night for this party. The chatter on the streets around the resort is of Visionquest, it is no secret what they plan to do and we are not the only one’s looking forward to it.
Now, blame it on our upbringing on huge multi million pound cinematic productions, where special effects produce alternate realities-a-plenty, but the club doesn’t look quite how I was imagining it on the run up. It may be fair to say that my expectations may have slipped into their own alternate reality and, in fact, what has been done does give the famous venue a slightly different edge to its normal attire. There are props dotted around the place that definitely mess with the mind, none more so than the telephone that, once lifted, puts you flat bang in a conversation you might never get out of! So the takeover is more of a subtle but effective one and if the truth be told after the initial impact, we are all really here to hear!
The promise of all four Visionquesters interacting behind the booth for the whole night never actually comes to fruition but the tunes that wash over the packed floor from start to finish are of the finest quality, assembled expertly and received gratefully by a sweaty, capacity crowd. When everything else is stripped away, the production, the hype, the marketing, all that really matters at the business end of any party is that the people delivering the music perform, the clubbers react and the vehicle which delivers one to the other is of a certain standard. When it comes to Lee Curtiss, Ryan Crosson, Seth Troxler and Shaun Reeves, you have four of the finest DJs on the planet right now and the music that they are producing is not only pushing musical parameters, it’s challenging a whole generation of clubbers, that same generation that is represented in force by the crowd tonight. And as for the vehicle, if there’s a louder sound system on the planet, we’ve yet to hear it! The only down side of the whole affair is that it only comes around once a year, ah well, only 363 shopping days until next Visionquest Ibiza!